The Mobile Learning Tipping Point

mLearning has been a buzzword in eLearning for decades. Nearly every year someone speculates that the time for mLearning has finally arrived – and just about that often we discover that still – very few people actually are producing their learning content for mobile devices. You can imagine then that it is with some trepidation that I enter into the arena, to echo voices that have often proclaimed a start to the mobile land-rush.

Nonetheless, the landscape is clearly changing all around us. A recent (2012) study from Sterling Brands and Ipsos, commissioned by Google, found that Americans (participants were from Boston, Austin and Los Angeles) engage with screens (computer, tablet, television & smart phones) 90% of the time. Participants reported that only 10% of their daily interactions with media were with printed publications. It’s a paradigm altering realization when you consider that all but a few interactions with media, are with rich – screen based media. We are truly a screen interfacing nation. The same study went on to identify staggering numbers of individual daily interaction with various devices, and reported that Americans typically spend a lot of time interacting with the screens on their devices and watching their televisions.

According to the same study, we spend an average of 4.1 hours each day interacting with screens. About a quarter of our interactions (24%) are spent on a personal computer, while nearly 4/10 (38%) of those screen interactions are with our smart phones. 9 % of daily interactions are with a Tablet, and the remaining time is spent before a television. Interestingly, the study also revealed that we are attempting to multi-task much of that time. The study found that 77% of TV viewers are using a smart device while they watch television.

This phenomena of referencing screens for information and communication is pervasive. It is found almost as commonly in education. A 2012 study from Interactive Educational System Design (IESD) found that nearly 54% (53.8%) of participants (qualified educators) reported that schools in their district had adopted at least some (25% or more) mobile technology. The same study found that more than a third of additional districts expected to reach the same levels of mobile adoption by 2013. If the projections of educators holds true – more than 75% of schools would have adopted mobile technologies (at least to some extent) by today.

Janet Clarey, in a 2012 study for Bersin on “The Rise of On-Demand Mobile Video for Learning and Development” clarifies that mobile learning is reaching a clear watershed moment saying “…mobile learning, m-learning, mobile enablement or mobile performance support – it is here in a big way. “
By August of 2012, Jeff Freyermuth described the state of eLearning aptly, by declaring via his Gartner Report title that “The Adoption of Mobile Learning is Approaching a Tipping Point.” In his article, Freyermuth cites the adoption of mobile device technologies by the public (employees & learners) as the impetus for the tipping point. Because people have the devices and use them for other things, their behavior and expectations are changing. That change in behavior and expectations creates a fundamental change in the landscape, and with it an opportunity to make the most of the new expectations. I agree with Freyermuth, the impetus for change is coming from the masses, and it will be the potent growl of their expectations that finally starts the engine on the mobile learning revolution.

It is the expectations of the masses that will drive the adoption of mobile learning, not the will of the technology industry. So solutions must serve the needs of learners, and of learning content developers.

It makes sense in this context to also examine the potential of mLearning to add value to learning overall. Just as the behavior of people has changed to adapt to the presence of mobile devices (consider obsessive texting and facebooking over lunch for example) it is also an open door to consider expanding the opportunity for learning content because it is unhinged from the traditional office environment and because of the additional tools that are exposed thanks to the tablet and smartphone capabilities.
You could summarize this enhanced capacity as follows;

Mobile learners are free to learn anywhere.

Mobile learners are free to learn anytime.

Mobile learners are able to move while learning.

Mobile learners can be tracked physically – the location of their learning becomes a potential learning tool.

Mobile learners can make use of the conventions of touch computing, including gestures and pinch zooms for example.

Mobile learners can interact with their devices in unexpected ways – like tilting or flipping a phone to communicate an idea or give an instruction.

Mobile learners can communicate with others using their devices.

Mobile learners can create images and video with their devices.

The list echoes the sentiment of Dr. Shannon Arvizu, who in 2013 published “Disrupting the university: near-term opportunities in the digital-learning market.” In the report for GigaOm Pro Arvizu identified “three trends for the near-term evolution of the University.” According to Arvizu these will include “Anytime Education” granting students access to educational content, classmates and teachers anytime, anywhere. Arvizu goes on to add “Personalized Education” as the second near term evolutionary trend. This vision is one of a university experience that is customized to the specific needs of each individual student. Finally, Arvizu lists “Project Based Education” as the last leg of these evolutionary innovations. While I’m skeptical that American universities are as near to these steps toward constructivism as Arvizu suggests, I certainly see both the opportunity for meeting the expectations of students regarding anywhere / anytime learning with mLearning solutions.

The competitive landscape is also in place to drive mLearning both within education and within the commercial sector. As universities struggle to compete for a shrinking number of students – it is apparent that more and more, online educational institutions are driving home the message that they can offer more education for less money and with greater convenience. At the same time, employers are competing for shrinking numbers of knowledge workers who are able to offer the appropriate balance of social, technical and communication skills to be problem solvers and leaders in a 21st century workplace.

In a fascinating 2013 report from Ambient Insight, Sam Adkins identifies clearly how the worldwide market for self-paced learning will surpass 50 billion dollars in annual revenue by 2016. Nestled away on page 26, Adkins describes a link that clearly points to another trend that provides evidence that the mLearning tipping point is upon us. It turns out that mLearning not only makes good sense for education, it’s also potentially quite lucrative. At least a significant number of global telecom companies appear to think so. Adkins calls telecom companies the ‘new disruptors’ in eLearning and identifies over 60 that are actively involved in providing eLearning content online for their respective countries. According to the report “A very new trend is the entrance of telecoms into the global eLearning market. They are often the major suppliers in specific countries and sometimes across regions. They are now offering Self-paced eLearning products targeted to consumers, corporations, government agencies, and academic buyers.“
Mobl21, a developer of an authoring tool for creating dedicated mLearning content published a report entitled “Mobile Learning Basics.” In the report the authors list some of the challenges faced in mLearning today. Perhaps chief among them is the lack of a single clear ‘mobile theory of learning.’

So have we reached the tipping point at which mobile learning developers will finally start producing content that leverages the power of mobile learning? Well there are still significant obstacles to mLearning development. Perhaps the obstacles ahead of us are one reason noted industry research firm Gartner chose to place mLearning for Smart Phones deep in the valley of disillusionment in it’s 2013 hype cycle for eLearning. Gartner estimates the stabilization of mLearning to come slowly as well, projecting the eventual plateau of productivity could be as far out as 10 years. If we accept Gartner’s predictions – it seems we are still quite a ways away from meaningful adoption of mLearning.

The other major challenge is the lack of a technology solution that is appropriate for the audience. It is always important to remember that the authors of eLearning (and eventually of mLearning) courses are trainers, teachers, subject matter experts and everyday people whose expertise is either instructional design, or the topic upon which the training is based. Course authors are very seldom multimedia experts. Even less often are they mobile learning experts. The technical challenges of creating interactive content, centered around authentic student learning, are substantial. Rather than force instructional designers and trainers, educators and subject matter experts to learn the latest about global geo-positioning, complex gestural multimedia interactions and accellerometers, shouldn’t we look to the industry to provide solutions for responsive design, location based learning and device specific inputs that are simple to use, so that mLearning authors can continue to focus on adding value to educational experiences, rather than on mastering complex new technologies?

As usual, I want to hear from you. What are your thoughts on this? Is it time for a mobile learning tipping point?

Yes, yes, and yes.
This week we ran some pilot sessions for some distance learning we’ve been doing that’s hosted on a university’s Blackboard LMS. The students are all Healthcare Assistants and some were a little worried about getting access to a work computer to do the learning on. As soon as we mentioned that Blackboard has a mobile client, about a quarter of them got quite excited and started scribbling down details. When they came back after a break, some of them had already downloaded the client onto their smartphones.

Allen, this is what you (Adobe) can do:
1. Like many things in Captivate, publishing to both Flash and html5 is not obvious, and you have to figure out the use of “multiscreen.html” for yourself.
2. The default “multiscreen.html” is hopelessly out of date, and the user-agent line has to be customised to work on current mobile devices (check out the forums for everybody who has struggled with this). Customising html is probably quite daunting for Captivate users whose background is in training and ID.
3. *Please* put more people onto App Packager / PhoneGap Build. It’s a brilliant, world-beating idea, and streets ahead of the opposition but just doesn’t work to an acceptable standard. Packaged apps are often bloated and unresponsive (ironically worse on more recent versions of Android), there is no sound on Android, and there is an ugly white bar blocking off the bottom part of the screen in Windows Phone. Support is non-existent because the PhoneGap Build people send you to Captivate Support and vice-versa.

http://www.mlearning.com Robert Gadd

You have scribed and published a great article, Allen, and its quite timely as well. As a technologist who has been involved in the enterprise mLearning space for 10+ years – spanning features phones at the outset into web access on smartphones on through native apps for handsets, tablets, eReaders and all manner of other intelligent, connected devices – I can assert that interest in mobile learning from the device-enabled masses is truly real and the proverbial tipping point you refer is now well within reach. A myriad of obstacles contributed to the slow pace of market adoption over the years and the widely held view by several pundits and experts that mobile learning might not be a ready for prime time. The four most commonly cited limitations included the “lack of capable smart devices” (reality: smartphones now outsell feature phones, and tablets outsell traditional laptops as well), the “lack of interest” to use mobile devices for anything besides making calls and sending texts/emails (reality: the simple majority of information access over the web now comes from a mobile device), the perceived “lack of security” (reality: enterprise-grade mLearning is actually MORE secure than traditional eLearning), and the “lack of flexible tools and platforms” to package and present mLearning courseware (reality: the mobile experience can actually be as good or even BETTER than an online experience). I’ve experienced all of these challenges from the front lines of enterprise mobile Ed Tech and while new challenges arise all the time, yesterday’s complaints have largely been squelched and progressive organizations of all sizes have attained fantastic, measurable results mobile learning, performance support and business communications.

And like the world of mobile tech in general, the landscape of enabling tech providing support for mLearning is also evolving at a rapid rate with most passing quarters yielding better tools,templates, and approaches. In fact, evolution has been eclipsed by revolution
even since the May 15th publication of your article with the release of Adobe’s new Captivate 8 (“Cp8”) offering. In one fell swoop, Adobe has significantly “changed the game” from what (until recently) I considered “sub-standard support for mobile learning” to what’s now clearly an offering that’s running at/near the front of the pack. WOW! Not only does Cp8 provide support for a highly customizable set of responsive content templates, a plethora of extended features also make it easy to set “smart positioning” of
graphical and text objects, to include support for common haptic responses like swipes, pinches/zooms, to include geo-location support, to add quizzes and interactions that leverage device accelerometers, and to preview your responsive projects across the common online-tablet-handset display metaphors using Adobe’s Edge Inspect offering (based on Adobe Shadow, I’d reason). Our team still needs to dig into the details on publication options for LMS and native app-focused delivery, bookmarking support between modalities for multi-screen learners and support for xAPI but overall Cp8 represents a giant leap forward. Kudos and congrats!

With Cp8, Adobe is clearly advancing what’s possible in our mLearning universe and coaxing the whole industry through that elusive “tipping point” we have anticipated for years. Clearly, other mainstream authoring tool vendors must now respond in kind with their own responsive and “mobile first” offerings or concede the field to what’s proving
to be a very advanced and practical solution for enterprise mobile content authoring. And Gartner should now rethink that 10-year adoption landscape too!